A Preliminary Revision of the North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora — John Shaqi
A Preliminary Revision of the North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and LophophoraCoulter, John Merle
Science
A Preliminary Revision of the North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora
Coulter, John Merle
Ariocarpus; Cactus; Peyote; Plants -- North America
Very closely related to prismaticum; but triangular portion of
tubercle acuminate and shorter, having an irregularly mamillate
upper surface, and the acumination ending abruptly in a
cartilaginous depression containing a tomentose pulvillus:
flowers 2.5 to 3 cm. long, white or pinkish, the sepals brownish.
Type, Pringle 2580 in Gray Herb.
At Carneros Pass, Coahuila.
Specimens examined: Coahuila (Pringle 2580 of 1889).
The type of this species was not among the collections received
from Cambridge, but a specimen of the same distribution from the
National Herbarium shows tubercle dimensions different from those
recorded in Dr. Watson's description. In that description the
triangular terminal surface is said to be "about an inch broad by
one-half inch," which is decidedly different from the equilateral
surface of the tubercle of prismaticum. In the National
Herbarium specimen of furfuraceum, however, of the same
distribution, the surface is almost equilateral, measuring 15 mm.
long by 18 mm. wide at base. Without the acuminate upper portion
the breadth of the triangular portion would be about double its
length. The lower rim of the cup-like depression which
terminates the tubercle and contains the pulvillus is sometimes
slightly prolonged into a tooth, which in prismaticum becomes the
sharp tip of the tubercle. The "minutely
furfuraceous-punctulate" character of the tubercle is common to
all the species of Anhalonium I have seen, and simply represents
the external openings of the remarkably long cuticular
passageways to the stomata.
4. Anhalonium pulvilligerum Lem. Cact. (1839).
Anhalonium elongatum Salm-Dyck (1850).
This seems to be a third grooveless Mexican species. I have seen
no specimens, but judge from the description that it differs from
the two preceding species chiefly in its less crowded and more
elongated tubercles (triangular portion 5 cm. long by 2.5 cm.
broad at base), which are covered at apex with a tomentose
pulvillus.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.
This curious genus is strictly Mexican, and, so far as at present
recorded, is characteristic of Coahuila, but a single species
(engelmanni) of the four or five known crossing the Rio Grande in
the Great Bend.
3. LOPHOPHORA, gen. nov.
Depressed-globose, proliferous and cespitose, tuberculate-ribbed,
unarmed plants: tubercles at first conical and bearing at summit
a flower-bearing areola with a dense tuft or short pencil of
compact erect hairs, when mature becoming broad and rounded (with
the remnant of the penicellate tuft as a persistent pulvillus in
a small central depression) and coalescing into broad convex
vertical ribs: spine bearing areolae obsolete: flowers borne at
the summit of nascent tubercles: ovary naked (that is free from
scales, but often downy): fruit and seed unknown.
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